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The present book has two origins, one very remote, the other nearer and more contingent. The first goes back to the time when I initiated my career as a neurophysiologist in Pisa, a small town with the advantage of a highly stimulating atmosphere created by two famous institutions, the University and the Scuola Normale Superiore. It came quite natur ally, then, while engaged in experimental work, to start brooding over the possible analogies between neurophysiological problems and those of the physical world. This slowly induced me to become less interested in the solution of the innumerable specific problems presented by the brain, and more in the general principles on which the brain function might be based. Certainly, for several years I had no clear idea of my purposes, or of the difficulties I could encounter in the task. However, it was clear enough that there ought to be a first, indispensable step: the search for methods of quantification of nervous activity, the sole way of allowing predictions about its behavior. At first, I somehow followed the fashion of the time, experiencing the impact of information theory on neurophysiology, but soon this was revealed as unsatisfactory, since it was only one aspect of the problem, and what I was interested in was not a way of describing the flow of information, but rather, the laws of the machinery.
Sommario
I General Properties of the Brain.- 1.Introducing the Problem.- 2. Structural and Functional Properties.- 3. The Key Property: Organization.- 4. Short Review of Approaches and Methods.- 5. Multidimensionality, Homogeneity and Fields.- II Physics and the Brain.- 6. A First Approach: Statistics.- 7. States of the Brain.- 8. Dynamic Laws and Transformations of Brain States.- 9. Reference Systems for Brain Function.- 10. The Continuum in the Central Nervous System.- 11. Outlines of a Theory.- 12. On this Side of the Border: Relativistic Aspects.- Appendix Beyond the Border: Metaphysics and the Brain A Sample of Problems.- A. 1 Introducing the Problems.- A. 2 Man and Animals.- A. 3 The Intellect.- A. 4 The Continuum.- A. 5 Theology and Neuroscience.- A. 6 Tension.- A. 7 Determination and Free Will.- References.- 1. Neurophysiology and Control Systems.- 2. Physics, Thermodynamics, Information Theory, and Related Subjects.- 3. Relativity and Related Subjects.- 4. Natural Philosophy.- 5. Appendix.
